


Unspeakable Lists

by Glinda



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-19
Updated: 2007-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's got a little list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspeakable Lists

**Author's Note:**

> Because I never get tired of writing about Jack...and really that first exchange between him and the Doctor during _Utopia_ had a helluva lot of subtext...
> 
> Once again for a tw_wotd_fic prompt:   
> _invective \in-VEK-tiv\, noun:  
> 1\. An abusive expression or speech; a vehement verbal attack.  
> 2\. Insulting or abusive language._
> 
> _adjective:  
> 1\. Of, relating to, or characterized by insult, abuse, or denunciatory language._
> 
> _Invective comes from Late Latin invectivus, "reproachful, abusive," from Latin invectus, past participle of invehi, "to inveigh against."_

There's a lot of things Jack wants to say when he finally lays eyes on the Doctor for the first time in over a century. Most of them are obscene. Nothing new there then.

Somewhere along the road he'd started making a list. Once he'd got the message from the universe that he couldn't die, and was stuck in 20th century Earth taking the slow path till he could track down the Doctor at a point where their time-lines coincided. Getting himself set up in Cardiff and slowly teasing out enough trust and favours to obtain the necessary 'freedoms' to actually do the job he was meant to be doing properly, distracted him for a while. But when he wasn't busy, in quiet moments, his mind would drift to what he would say to the Doctor when he finally caught up with him.

Originally the plan had been pretty much track him down, storm back into the TARDIS demand an explanation, get one, have explosive argument, hopefully have hot make up sex (well, he could hope). His new found immortality aside, he had distinct memories of Daleks baring down upon him, he clung to the notion that it was entirely possible that the Doctor had believed him dead, lost among the Dalek dust. Shame the Doctor hadn't thought to collect his body for a decent burial but the man had lost his entire species to those tin pots. Another reminder of his own failings really wasn't what the bloke needed was it?

As time went on and the deaths piled up and the Doctor remained elusive he began to wonder. Did he know? Was he avoiding Jack? If so why?

Some days he swore it was only anger and that burning need for answers that got him through the days.

So he made his list. A way to deal with those waves of crushing hopelessness that crept up on him at weak moments. (Generally at four in the morning when he was cold, wet, in a ditch in the middle of nowhere and covered in more blood than he'd thought humanly possible, often his own) It started as a way to mark the miles, as he tramped down empty dark roads from whatever his most recent fate had been. Something to help him put one foot in front of the other. Better that than lying in a ditch cursing the Doctor to the stars.

He kept the list, long and methodical as it now was, in a drawer in his desk at Torchwood. He's turned it round in his head so many times that the word Why is now permanently bound to the word Doctor. So as he tears across the open ground towards the ship he once called home, he doesn't think to bring the list, and not a single item that ever graced it over the years crosses his mind. Clinging to the ship as it rips through the vortex, screaming at the pair of them the only question that matters, begging the ship to understand his unspoken plea.

Waking up at the end of the universe, looking at a new face on an old friend, the billions of questions he's desperate for an answer to all fade and collacse into one.

"Doctor."

He's almost surprised that the Doctor can meet his eyes unflinching, but he does, and Jack can see the shadow of what that's costing him.

"Captain."

The Doctor's never been one for dramatic apologies. And for the first time he knows he'll get the answers to his questions, all he has to do is find the words to ask.

Doesn't mean they'll be nice words though...

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Knocking at the Door (the Things Unspoken Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050) by [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/pseuds/Beatrice_Otter)




End file.
